Modeling magnetic multipolar phases in density functional theory
- Author(s)
- Dario Fiore Mosca, Leonid Pourovskii, Cesare Franchini
- Abstract
Multipolar magnetic phases in correlated insulators represent a great challenge for density functional theory (DFT) due to the coexistence of intermingled interactions, typically spin-orbit coupling, crystal field and com-plex noncollinear and high-rank intersite exchange, creating a complected configurational space with multiple minima. Although the +U correction to DFT allows, in principle, the modeling of such magnetic ground states, its results strongly depend on the initially symmetry breaking, constraining the nature of order parameter in the converged DFT + U solution. As a rule, DFT + U calculations starting from a set of initial on-site magnetic moments result in a conventional dipolar order. A more sophisticated approach is clearly needed in the case of magnetic multipolar ordering, which is revealed by a null integral of the magnetization density over spheres centered on magnetic atoms, but with nonzero local contributions. Here we show how such phases can be efficiently captured using an educated constrained initialization of the on-site density matrix, which is derived from the multipolar-ordered ground state of an ab initio effective Hamiltonian. Various properties of such exotic ground states, like their one-electron spectra, become therefore accessible by all-electron DFT + U methods. We assess the reliability of this procedure on the ferro-octupolar ground state recently predicted in Ba2MOsO6 (M = Ca, Mg, Zn) [Phys. Rev. Lett. 127, 237201 (2021)].
- Organisation(s)
- Computational Materials Physics
- External organisation(s)
- Centre National De La Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Collège de France, University of Bologna, École Polytechnique
- Journal
- Physical Review B
- Volume
- 106
- No. of pages
- 7
- ISSN
- 2469-9950
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.106.035127
- Publication date
- 07-2022
- Peer reviewed
- Yes
- Austrian Fields of Science 2012
- 103015 Condensed matter, 103018 Materials physics
- Keywords
- ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Electronic, Optical and Magnetic Materials, Condensed Matter Physics
- Portal url
- https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/publications/3ddd033f-c91c-4f86-9fd7-3032625ae36d